Opinion: Federalist voters are faced with some difficult decisions

Don MacPherson

Jean Charest has called the latest published poll results, showing his Liberal party losing the Sept. 4 Quebec election, “unreliable.”

But the actions of Charest and his party say otherwise.

When the Liberals spend more of their campaign budget on English television spots than usual, and when their leader spends time in the West Island and Outaouais in the last 10 days before a general election, it means something.

It means they’re in danger of losing even seats formerly considered safe.

The poll results from a survey conducted by Léger Marketing for the QMI news agency after last week’s crucial televised leaders’ debates, show Liberal support cratering.

The Liberals were a distant third in popularity among French-speaking voters — the choice of only 18 per cent — and third in every region except Montreal Island.

The poll results indicated that, barring a miracle, the Liberals were facing their worst defeat since 1976.

They also showed the Parti Québécois with less than overwhelming support, but enough for a slim majority in the National Assembly.

So with less than a week to go until the election, the federalist voter is faced with a difficult decision:

Go down with the Liberals, the only major party that is truly federalist.

Or cast a tactical vote for the Coalition Avenir Québec as a lesser evil than the PQ and apparently the only party left with a realistic chance of defeating the PQ, or at least denying it a majority.

It would be the kind of tactical vote that sovereigntists cast in last year’s federal election, when they switched from the Bloc Québécois to the federalist New Democratic Party to try to prevent Stephen Harper’s Conservatives from forming a majority government.

But there’s more at stake for federalists in this Quebec election, with the PQ hoping to hold another sovereignty referendum.

And the trouble with casting a tactical vote is that you can’t be sure how everybody else in your riding will vote.

This raises another question for the federalist voter: If I vote for the CAQ, do I risk splitting the anti-PQ vote and helping the PQ candidate slip up the middle and capture the seat?

That risk would be real in relatively close Liberal-PQ races, such as in the Montreal Island ridings of Crémazie, Laurier-Dorion, Saint-Henri-Saint-Anne and Verdun. But most Liberal majorities on the island in the last election were so big that even if the 2008 Liberal vote in those ridings split evenly with the CAQ, the PQ probably still wouldn’t take the seat.

Whether a seat goes to the Liberals or the CAQ, it doesn’t go to the PQ.

If it goes to the Liberals, that riding will probably be represented in an opposition caucus in the National Assembly.

But every seat added to the CAQ’s column in the standings brings that party one seat closer to forming the next government, instead of the PQ.

The situation is different in the mainland part of the 450 area code north and south of Montreal and Laval, and in most of the rest of the province outside Quebec City.

In those regions, Léger has the Liberals out of the race, in third place. That puts their remaining supporters in those areas in a position to play a spoiler’s role against the PQ by swinging behind the CAQ.

This, I emphasize, is not an endorsement of the CAQ, its leader, its platform or any of its candidates.

In fact, as I wrote Saturday, while the Liberals’ platform offers nothing to English-speaking voters in particular, the CAQ’s, like that of the PQ, offers even less.

Nor is this a recommendation. It’s an analysis — of how a tactical vote by federalists against the PQ might work. It doesn’t come with a guarantee.

It’s up to the federalist voter to assess the situation in his or her riding, the risks and rewards, and to make his or her own decision.

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